Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 6, June, 1953

The Loyal One by Richard Deming

The road, even in good weather, must have been little more than a trail. Now, covered by nearly a foot of snow and with the depth increasing by the minute, Cynthia realized it would have been impassible for a lesser car or a lesser driver. Even with its special chains and with Johnny Venuti at the wheel, it seemed a miracle to her the big sedan was able to go on.

From the back seat she strained to peer past Johnny’s shoulder at the road ahead, but by now the distance the yellow fog lights were able to probe through the steadily thickening curtain of falling snow had become so slight, the hood obstructed what little of the road could be seen from the back seat. Involuntarily she gave a frightened little whimper, and her husband at her side squeezed her hand reassuringly.

“We’ll make it, baby,” he said. “Johnny could drive through a swamp at midnight easier than most guys can drive on a flat road at noon. Hey, Johnny?”

“We’ll make it, Mrs. Ross,” the driver said in a relaxed voice. “It’s only about another mile.”

Ashamed of her whimper, Cynthia sank back against her husband’s shoulder. But when she spoke, her voice was fretful. “Even if we do, we’ll be trapped for the winter. We’ll never get out of these mountains until it thaws.”

“Thawing will start within six weeks,” Harry Ross said in the same reassuring voice. “And we don’t want to get out before then. There’s enough wood and food in the cabin to last twice that long. And remember, if we can’t get out, nobody can get in to us either.”

“We should have headed for Canada,” Cynthia said. “We should have taken a chance.”

“I know what I’m doing, baby. It wouldn’t have been a chance. When Masters points his finger, your only chance is to disappear. Completely. Nobody but me and Johnny knows I got this hunting cabin, but syndicate guns will be checking every other spot in the country I ever been to. In six weeks they’ll be tired of looking and we’ll have a chance to sneak out of the country.”

Sneak, she thought. Run like a frightened rabbit. The mighty Harry Ross turned coward.

No, she corrected herself instantly, it was not cowardice. Even when the guns sounded he had not exhibited fear. Retreat in the face of invincible odds was merely good sense. But the catastrophic sense of loss remained with her. Where was the glamorous life she had visualized as a top racketeer’s wife? What good were diamonds and a mink coat in an isolated mountain cabin? Would the showers of expensive gifts, the gay times she had enjoyed for only three short months ever return?

I wish I were back at the hospital passing bedpans, she said to herself, and then the thought of her past nursing career reminded her of her current nursing problem.

“Your leg,” she said to Harry. “Suppose it gets infected?”

Harry emitted an indulgent laugh. “That's why I married a nurse, baby. There's a first aid kit in the cabin, and it’s up to you to see it don’t get infected.”

“I’m not a doctor,” she said dubiously.

The car made a slow right turn, crept on a few yards and stopped.

“What’s the matter?” Cynthia inquired anxiously.

In a matter-of-fact voice Johnny Venuti said, “We’re there.”

He pointed left, and when Cynthia rubbed a clear place in the fogged-over window with her glove, she could dimly make out the silhouette of a small cabin not more than a dozen feet away.

“I’ll leave the motor running and you people sit here where it’s warm until I get a fire going,” Johnny said. “It must be around zero out, and it’s probably just as cold in the cabin.”

He slipped from the car quickly, but the momentary opening of the door allowed in a cold blast which caused the couple in the rear seat to shiver. For a few minutes neither the man nor woman spoke.

Cynthia, depressedly musing on the bleak prospect of their self-imposed imprisonment, found the stealthy thought creeping into her mind that it would be even bleaker if Johnny Venuti were not along. Instantly she combatted the thought by inducing in her mind synthetic dislike of the lean bodyguard. He looked at her, she told herself righteously. His face always respectful, of course, but unable to hide completely the suppressed hunger deep in his eyes.

Then, in an unexpected flash of honesty, she admitted to herself she had caught the same look, not even suppressed, in the eyes of many other men without getting upset. What disturbed her about Johnny was her irrational response. For every time she sensed his hidden hunger, she was forced to strangle an equivalent sense of hunger in herself.

Perversely, in an attempt to convince herself she disliked Johnny, she said, “Why did we have to bring him, Harry?”

Her husband glanced at her in surprise. “Who would have driven otherwise, Cyn? You, who can’t park without denting a fender? Or me, with a bullet hole in my leg?” When she made no reply, he asked, “Don’t you like Johnny?”

“Of course,” she said quickly. “I just thought... won’t it be kind of crowded? The cabin doesn’t seem very big.”

“It isn’t. But we’ll manage. Take it easy on Johnny, Cyn.”

“What do you mean?” she asked with a touch of panic, fearing he had detected her unconscious reaction to Johnny’s glances.

To her relief he said, “I mean don’t act like you resent his presence. Johnny means a lot more to me than just a bodyguard, and I mean a lot more to Johnny than just his boss. He’d risk his life for me, baby. In fact he has more than once. He did again yesterday when Master’s hood put that bullet through my leg. It’s bad enough for him to be stuck up here all winter. Don’t make it worse by making him feel uncomfortable.”

She said in a low voice, “I like him all right, Harry.”

At the sound of the trunk lid being raised, both turned to peer through the rear window. Johnny was dragging out suitcases and staggering toward the cabin with them.

A few minutes later the bodyguard slid into the front seat, his clothing covered with snow. “Everything set,” he said, and switched off the ignition.

There was something final in the sound of the motor dying. Up to that instant there had been a slim hope in Cynthia’s mind that Harry would abandon the idea of using the mountain hideout and they would start back to civilization. The hope died with the motor.

With Cynthia supporting his weight on one side and Johnny supporting him on the other, they managed to get the wounded man into the cabin. When they had eased him onto one of the two built-in double-decked bunks, Johnny rushed back to the door, slammed it against the encroaching cold and bolted it. Cynthia shook the snow from her mink coat and then stared around her in astonishment.

The cabin consisted of only one room of about nine by twelve feet. One wall was entirely taken up by the two double-decked bunks. The opposite wall was piled from floor to ceiling with cut firewood. A single narrow window next to the door by which they had entered looked out from the front wall, and the rear wall contained another door in its center.

To one side of the rear door was an old-fashioned cookstove, at the moment emitting a satisfying glow of heat. To its other side was a small metal sink without taps, and whose drain spout led to a bucket beneath it. Over the sink was an open tier of shelves containing dishes, pots and pans, and an enormous supply of tinned foods.

The only other furnishings were a wooden table, four wooden chairs, a galvanized washtub and an old-fashioned bedroom commode. Light was furnished by a gasoline-mantle lamp hung from the ceiling, and in lieu of closet space a few bent coat hangers dangled from nails in the walls.

Watching his wife’s expression with wry amusement, Harry said, “Not exactly the Waldorf, is it?”

She turned to look down at him. “I didn’t expect running water and electricity, Harry. But good God! You expect us to live six weeks in this small space?”

When he merely continued to regard her with amusement, she pointed at the rear door. “Where does that go?”

“Outside, baby. Fifty feet away you’ll find the outhouse. It’s small, only a one-holer, but it’s built snug and it’s got a little kerosene stove in it.”

“Good God! There’s not even a curtain to draw. How am I supposed to take a bath?”

Harry pointed to the galvanized tub. “You fill that with snow and put it on the stove. Don’t worry about Johnny. He’ll turn his back.”

Cynthia’s gaze moved to the square features of the gunman, who looked back at her without expression. But in his eyes she detected the same faint look of hunger with which he always regarded her, and quickly she averted her own eyes for fear he would be able to read the responsive hunger in them.

“Sure, Mrs. Ross,” Johnny said quietly. “I’ll turn my back.”

The room by now had become comfortably warm. Shrugging out of his topcoat, Johnny hung it from a nail on the wall and turned to help Cynthia off with her coat. With her back to him, she felt his knuckles rub along the silk covering her arms as she slid from the coat, and the contact sent a terrifying sweep of fire through her whole body.

As Johnny carefully hung the coat on a hanger, Harry regarded his wife admiringly. She was a beautiful woman, with delicate features, an over-ripe mouth, a pale, milk-white complexion emphasized by jet black hair, and a perfectly proportioned body. Cynthia was proud of her body and proud of the hold it gave her over her middle-aged husband. She started to respond to his admiring glance by flattening her stomach and thrusting her firm breasts outward to make the thin silk of her dress outline her figure in detail. But when Johnny turned around, she abruptly let her shoulders slump and folded her hands demurely in front of her.

Together she and Johnny helped Harry remove his topcoat, suit coat and shoes, so that he lay on the bunk in only shirt and trousers.

“Now loosen your belt so I can pull off your pants,” Cynthia ordered. “I want to give that wound a decent dressing.”

Obediently Harry did as directed and she pulled his trousers down below his knees. In the center of his right thigh was a blood-soaked rag bandage.

Carefully she pulled it loose and looked down with pursed lips at the purple-ringed hole. Ordering the wounded man to roll on his side, she examined the puckered but clean exit hole on the back of his thigh.

“Heat some water,” she told Johnny without looking at him. Rising, she began poking through the first aid kit attached to the wall next to the front door.

Twenty minutes later Harry Ross, freshly bandaged, sat upright on his bunk wearing clean pajamas and sipping a cup of coffee. His wife and Johnny Venuti sat on opposite sides of the table with cups before them also. Johnny had removed his suit coat to disclose a leather shoulder harness containing a German P-38 with a transparent grip.

Cynthia’s eyes rested idly on the gun, traveled to the bodyguard’s powerful shoulders and then to his square, expressionless face. There was strength in that lean body, she was thinking. Ruthless, almost animal strength. Fleetingly she imagined his arms crushing her against him, and was horrified that the thought created a guilty feeling of pleasure.

“Something bothering you, baby?” Harry asked.

Swiftly she jerked her gaze from Johnny. “I just wondered why Johnny has to keep wearing that gun up here,” she improvised.

“Force of habit,” Johnny said. Slipping off the harness, he hung it from the back of his chair.

“I never saw a gun grip like that before,” Cynthia said. “Is that a picture on it?”

Instead of answering, Johnny glanced questioningly at his boss.

“She’s a big girl,” Harry said. “Show it to her.”

Slipping the automatic from its holster, Johnny removed the clip and ejected the shell in the chamber. He offered it to Cynthia, butt first.

“It’s a war souvenir,” he said. “The Kraut it come from must of cut the side grips out of plexiglass from the cowling of a crashed plane, and put those pictures under the plexiglass. Maybe she was the Kraut’s girl.”

The pictures under the transparent side grips were of a plump, full-bosomed blonde, the one under the right grip a front view and the one on the left a rear view. Both were full-length photographs and in both the girl was stark naked. Cynthia handed the gun back without comment.

“I got it off my captain at Cassino,” Johnny said. “Best officer we ever had, Captain Grace. I’d of followed that guy straight into hell.”

“I thought you said it came from a German,” Cynthia said.

“Yeah, the captain found it on a dead Kraut, and when the captain died, I got it off him. Funny thing, the way it happened.”

The bodyguard stared down at the gun in his hand, and when neither Cynthia nor Harry commented, he said, “We was on a patrol and the old man got out ahead of us. We saw him get hit, but just then a couple of Kraut machine guns started sweeping the area between us and Captain Grace. The sergeant was all for getting the hell out of there, but I could see the captain leaning back against a pile of rocks, and he didn’t look dead to me. So I went after him. Still don’t know how I made it there and back. It was three hundred yards through machine-gun fire with hardly any cover.”

Cynthia, who had been listening intently, stared at him with dawning understanding of her husband's regard for the lean gunman. Her normal sense of guilty uneasiness in his presence was replaced by a feeling of astonished respect.

“That must have taken remarkable courage,” she said.

Johnny considered this with evident surprise, as though it had never previously occurred to him. Finally he said in a tone which indicated he thought the explanation should have been obvious, “He was my captain.”

After a moment he added, “Never forget what he said when I showed up. He kind of smiled and said, ‘I might have known you’d be along, Johnny. But it’s no use. I’ll be dead in ten minutes.’ He wasn’t lying. He was totally paralyzed from a hole square in his center, and the minute I saw his wound, I knew it would kill him to move him a foot.”

Again he gazed down at the gun he was holding. In a reflective voice he said, “Funny part about it, two minutes later he was cussing my brains out.”

Both members of his audience looked at him without understanding.

“Because I took the gun,” Johnny explained. “When he felt me pulling it out of his holster, he got it in his head that’s all I’d come after. Christ, as though I’d crawl three hundred yards through machine-gun fire after a lousy gun. I never even thought of it until I saw the captain was a goner. But when I crawled away he called me every kind of name he knew. He was still swearing when I got out of earshot.”

Cynthia said blankly, “But, Johnny, if it upset him that much, why didn’t you leave it?”

“What good was a gun to a dead man?” Johnny asked with genuine astonishment. “I was just being practical. Christ, if I could of changed places with the captain, I’d of been glad to watch him crawl away, but there wasn’t anything I could do for him. I always liked this gun. Lot’s of times before the captain got killed I used to wish it was me who had found that dead Kraut instead of him.”

Harry said with a mixture of wonder and affection, “Johnny, you’ve got the damndest philosophy I ever heard of.”

The tale left Cynthia more confused about Johnny than ever, for it revealed a mixture of courage, loyalty and ruthlessness which hardly seemed compatible in the same person. Deliberately she wrenched her mind from him by leaving the table to examine the galvanized wash tub. Harry’s eyes followed her.

“Cynthia wants her bath,” he said to Johnny. “Come hell or high water, Cynthia wants her bath seven nights a week. As a student, they called her ‘Sanitary Cynthia’.”

“What’s wrong with liking to be clean?” Cynthia asked.

Without having to be requested, Johnny did the preliminary work necessary to taking a bath under primitive conditions. Going outdoors with the galvanized tub and a snow shovel, he returned with the tub half full of snow, dragged it across the floor and heaved it up onto the stove.

It took nearly an hour for the snow to become hot water. When its temperature finally satisfied her, Johnny lifted the tub from the stove to the floor. Then he seated himself at the table with his back to the tub and began to lay out a deck of cards for solitaire.

Cynthia was acutely conscious of the size of the room as she began to undress, for the position of the table in the cabin’s center placed Johnny’s back not more than three feet from the tub. Nevertheless she had no intention of going bathless for six weeks, and decided she might as well steel herself to the unconventional circumstances from the beginning.

She did hurry, however, and she bathed as quietly as possible, hoping the absence of splashing would make Johnny less conscious of her nakedness immediately behind him. From his bunk Harry watched this struggle between modesty and hygiene with evident amusement.

It was not until she had stepped from the tub and was rubbing herself down with a towel that she remembered the window directly in front of Johnny. Against the blackness outside it acted as a dull mirror in which she could see her reflection clearly. As she looked, she met the reflection of Johnny’s eyes staring straight at her, and quickly covered herself with the towel.

Johnny’s eyes dropped to his cards and he did not look up again as she slipped into the thick flannel nightgown. She had picked it out when they stopped to buy sufficient clothing to last their stay at the cabin. Barefooted she ran to her bunk and slipped beneath the covers.

Silently Johnny rose, dragged the washtub to the front door and emptied it into the night.

That night it stormed. The earlier snowfall had been windless, the flakes settling straight down like an endlessly unrolling curtain. But during the night wind began to whisper about the eaves and steadily increased its force until it screamed and howled like a million caged animals.

When Cynthia awoke at seven in the morning, Harry was still asleep and breathing heavily, but Johnny was gone from the cabin. He had rebuilt the fire, for the room was pleasantly warm. She took advantage of his absence to dress quickly in woolen slacks and ski boots she had bought for the winter siege, and pulled over her head a tight-fitting turtle-necked sweater with long sleeves.

She washed briefly in cold water from a bucket next to the sink, brushed her teeth and had just finished brushing her hair in the small shaving mirror over the sink when Johnny came in the back door. He was dressed in hunting pants and leather knee boots, a Mackinaw coat and a woolen cap with ear mulls, and he carried the snow shovel.

Stomping snow from his boots, he said, “I cleared a path to the outhouse and lighted the kerosene stove. It’s stopped snowing finally.”

As she made her way to the outhouse Cynthia discovered the snow either side of the path Johnny had shoveled reached clear to her shoulders at one spot, but at another place faded in depth to below her knees. Glancing at the surrounding country, she realized the night wind had piled snow in the drifts which might vary from a matter of inches to spots where it would be over her head. It was cold, still hovering around zero, but the sky was clear with the promise of sunshine and the air was entirely still.

When she returned to the cabin Harry was still asleep and she let him sleep until she had warmed herself with a cup of coffee.

Then she poured some cold water into a bowl, added boiling water from the kettle on the stove and carried the bowl over to Harry’s bunk, where she set it on a chair close to the bunk. Over the back of the chair she placed a neatly folded towel and wash cloth.

“What you doing?” Johnny asked.

“I’m going to give him a bed bath and change his dressing.”

Gently she shook Harry awake. He looked up at her dully and licked at lips she suddenly noticed were dry and caked. Quickly she laid a hand across his forehead.

“You’ve got fever,” she said. “A lot of fever. I wish I’d thought to buy a thermometer when we stopped for clothes.”

“Get me a drink of water, baby,” Harry said thickly.

He drank two glasses, which seemed to make him feel better and removed the thickness from his speech, but his forehead remained hot to the touch. Johnny Venuti watched interestedly as Cynthia stripped her patient and gave him a bed bath with such dexterity not a drop of water spilled on the blankets.

As Cynthia removed the old wound dressing, her face grew momentarily pinched when she saw the inflamed area around the wound and the narrow red streak leading upward along Harry’s thigh toward his groin. Harry noticed the streak at the same time.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Just an after-effect of your wound,” she said calmly. Reaching down, she grasped his bare big toe and gave it a sharp pinch. “Feel that?”

“Not very much,” Harry said. “My foot feels kind of numb.”

Without comment Cynthia redressed the wound and helped Harry back into his pajamas. As Johnny handed the wounded man a cup of coffee, she walked to the window and stared out at the sedan. It was nearly buried in a snowdrift which covered it clear to the top of the windshield.

Abruptly she turned around and announced with loud calmness, “You’ve got septicemia, Harry. Blood poisoning.”

Both men stared at her.

“How far is the nearest telephone?” she asked.

“Twenty miles,” Johnny said. Walking to the window, he swept his gaze over the jagged white landscape, then turned and glanced about the room. “We should have brought snow shoes, boss.”

Harry merely watched his face quietly.

In the same unnaturally loud voice in which she had made her announcement Cynthia said, “There’s nothing I can do with only a first aid kit. Without antibiotics and blood transfusions he’ll be dead in a matter of days. He’ll probably die anyway unless we get him to a hospital by tomorrow morning at the latest.”

Again Johnny’s eyes searched the countryside through the window. “Even a tank couldn’t get up here through this snow,” he said. “Some of those drifts must be twenty feet deep. It will take a helicopter, providing I can get hold of one.”

He crossed the room, pulled on a thick sweater and donned his Mackinaw over it. Cynthia and Harry watched silently as he selected a number of chocolate bars from one of the shelves over the sink and thrust them into his coat pocket. Then he removed a flyrod from the wall, stripped off its reel and laid the reel on the table.

“You won’t make it, Johnny,” Harry said in a low voice.

Johnny made no reply, but he flashed Harry a look which was a mixture of assurance and the unvoiced understanding that exists between men who possess a deep and mutual personal attachment. Then he walked to the door, pulled it open and was confronted by a wall of snow nearly waist high. For a moment he seemed taken aback, but with a slight shrug he plowed through, dragging the door shut behind him.

Through the window Cynthia watched his slow progress. A few yards from the cabin the snow became only knee deep and he stopped to brush himself off. Then he probed ahead with the flyrod, jabbing it through the crust clear to the ground before every step. He had traveled no more than a dozen yards when he encountered a hole which swallowed the rod clear to its handle. Withdrawing it, he probed again until he located solid foothold and moved slowly on.

Behind her she heard Harry’s teeth begin to chatter.

For the next eight hours Cynthia alternately combatted Harry’s chills and fevers, one moment burying him under blankets and the next bathing his fevered body with cool water, pouring more into him in an attempt to satisfy a raging thirst, and placing snow packs on his brow. The chills were less frequent than the fevers, the latter, which she estimated by feel might run as high as 105 degrees, being her most constant foe.

By the middle of the afternoon the patient’s right foot and lower calf had turned a dull purple and there was an inflamed area four inches in diameter around his wound. From it a thick red streak ran clear up his thigh to his groin.

Most of the time Harry lay torpid, conscious but seemingly in a stupor. Occasionally he roused enough to say that his leg hurt or ask for water, and even during his torpid periods he was able to respond to questions and seemed vaguely aware of what was going on. In spite of his high fever there was no indication of delirium.

From the moment Cynthia had announced he had blood poisoning Harry accepted the situation without complaint, understanding at once his sole hope for life lay in Johnny’s ability to reach the phone. But despite this understanding the suspense of waiting seemed to weigh less heavily on him than upon Cynthia. As the hours passed she found herself visualizing Johnny tumbling into bottomless snow drifts which smothered him, or wandering lost and eventually lying down to freeze.

During one such period of anxiety she was guiltily horror-stricken to realize she was not thinking at all of the inevitable consequences to her husband if Johnny failed to get through, but her sole fear was that Johnny would die.

When light began to dim inside the cabin, she took down the gasoline lamp, pumped it full of air and lighted it. She had just hung it back on its hook when Johnny returned.

The bodyguard entered even more abruptly than he had left, flinging open the door, letting the flyrod drop loosely from his hand and staggering forward to fall flat on his face. Cynthia shut and bolted the door, then turned to assist him, but he had already climbed to his feet and reeled to the table, where he collapsed with his head in his arms.

It took thirty minutes of thawing and four cups of coffee to get Johnny in shape to report. And when he finally was able to speak, he merely said in a weary voice, “I didn’t get there,” and collapsed full length on Cynthia’s bunk, unable to make it into his upper berth.

From his own bunk Harry eyed his bodyguard dully and without recrimination, then turned to gaze at his wife. With blunt fatalism he asked, “How long will I last, baby?”

“Don’t talk like that!” Cynthia said hysterically.

At nine o’clock, after three and a half hours sleep, Johnny suddenly rolled from Cynthia’s bunk, crossed to the sink and washed his face in cold water. He seemed fully refreshed from his eight-hour ordeal when he walked over to look down at Harry.

“Sorry, boss,” he said in a quiet voice. “Snowdrifts have changed the whole shape of the country, and with snow on them every one of these hills looks alike. I couldn't recognize a single landmark. I was out seven hours when I cut my own trail and realized I had circled back to within a mile of the cabin.”

“It’s all right, Johnny,” Harry said dully. “Most guys wouldn’t even have tried.”

“You don’t have to look so resigned about it, boss. Just because I walked in a circle today doesn’t mean I won’t follow a straight line tomorrow.”

Cynthia felt her heart begin to pound at the words. Johnny intended to try again in the morning. He meant to battle engulfing snow and zero weather not only tomorrow, but again and again until he either got through or died trying.

Suppose he had not circled at the precisely lucky arc which led him back to his own trail only a mile from the cabin, she wondered? Suppose nightfall had caught him wandering in the vast expanse of snow? Her reasoning told her it would be inconceivable for him to have the same blind luck twice.

Terror-stricken by the direction her thoughts were taking, she found herself deliberately weighing her husband’s life against Johnny’s. If Johnny did manage to get through, Harry still probably would survive. But if Johnny failed, both men would die.

She came to a decision.

“You’d be wasting your time, Johnny,” she said in a thin voice. “He’s so toxic now, even a hospital couldn’t save him.”

Johnny stared at her. After a long time he said, “Maybe you could be wrong. Even doctors make mistakes.”

“Not about septicemia,” Cynthia said soberly. “I’ve been a registered nurse for five years, Johnny. I know when blood poisoning has reached the point where it’s hopeless.”

Wordlessly he continued to stare at her for another full minute. Finally his face blanked of all expression.

Walking over to the table, he said, “How about food?”

In a trancelike state of mental exhaustion she heated him a can of stew and made him a pot of coffee. While he ate, Cynthia made Harry as comfortable as she could.

When Johnny finally pushed back from the table, he dragged the galvanized washtub from its corner, lifted the snow shovel and went out the front door. Within minutes he was back with a half tubfull of snow. Cynthia watched wide-eyed.

Then he looked at her, and the hunger in his eyes was flaunted. She backed from the look.

“I’m... I’m not going to take a bath tonight, Johnny.”

Johnny raised his eyebrows. Then he glanced at Harry, but the old expression of respect and understanding was gone from his dyes. The glance was a dismissal, the callous appraisal of a corpse.

“How long will he drag it out?”

Cynthia licked her lips. “A few days. A week. Maybe longer.”

“I’m not waiting a week,” Johnny said. He walked toward her slowly and she backed until she was pressed against the upright at the foot of her bunk. His eyes moved over her tight turtlenecked sweater, down along her woolen slacks to her ski boots and up along her body again.

“Take your clothes off,” he said.

The words aroused Harry. “What was that?” he asked.

Ignoring him, Johnny continued to stare at Cynthia. She whispered, “Not in front of him, Johnny. Good God! Not right in front of him!”

“Take your clothes off!”

“Why, you Son...!” Harry said weakly. “No-good, lousy Son...!”

When Cynthia merely continued to stare at Johnny from overlarge eyes, he suddenly landed his palm across her cheek with such force she was knocked sprawling on her bunk.

“This is the last time. Take them off or I’ll rip them off.”

She stared up at him in unbelieving fascination. But as his hands tensed to reach for her, she sat up with a shudder, leaned forward without taking her enormous eyes from his face, and with unsteady fingers slowly began to unlace her boots.

From the other bunk the shriek of profanity lifted to a crescendo.